Ranking Some Generals in the History of Warfare
1–10 of 41 posts
Re: Ranking Some Generals in the History of Warfare
#2[deleted]
Re: Ranking Some Generals in the History of Warfare
#3"Ranking Almost Every General in the History of Warfare"
Not even close to "almost every general". Even taking into consideration his own admission that he left out the Mongols, his analysis is obviously very, very Western centric. Somehow the omission of the most populous continent in the world and probably throughout history didn't dissuade the author from making such a bold claim. The most obvious omissions were the Chinese and Japanese generals. It's not as if those two countries didn't have a lot of wars, wrote a lot about war ("Art of War" anyone), or lack a historical tradition. Let's not forget the Indian sub-continent has its own history of warfare.
His comment about Rommel was kind of awful as well. Rather than trying to correct for why his model didn't generate some expected results, he tried to convince people that their perspective is wrong. Rommel may not be the impressive general he's popularly believed to have been but the author's understanding of Rommel is quite shallow. Rommmel's exploits goes back all the way to WWI. He was the youngest recipient of the "Pour Le Merite" when he captured over 9000 prisoners with just 150 soldiers.
This is an example of someone with technical skills applying those skills to a field they don't really understand and wrapping it up with a bold claim.
Re: Ranking Some Generals in the History of Warfare
#4"Ranking Almost Every General in the History of Warfare" Not even close to "almost every general". Even taking into consideration his own admission that he left out the Mongols, his analysis is obviously very, very Western centric. Somehow the omission of the most populous continent in the world and probably throughout history didn't dissuade the author from making such a bold claim. The most obvious omissions were t…
OK, we'll put "some" above.
Re: Ranking Some Generals in the History of Warfare
#5"Ranking Almost Every General in the History of Warfare" Not even close to "almost every general". Even taking into consideration his own admission that he left out the Mongols, his analysis is obviously very, very Western centric. Somehow the omission of the most populous continent in the world and probably throughout history didn't dissuade the author from making such a bold claim. The most obvious omissions were t…
>This is an example of someone with technical skills applying those skills to a field they don't really understand and wrapping it up with a bold claim.
Except he forgot to close with "which is why you should fund my startup."
Re: Ranking Some Generals in the History of Warfare
#6This is really neat. I love the idea of applying sabermetrics to historic generals.
However, one failure of this approach is that it assumes that the numbers of soldiers given for ancient battles is accurate. The Greeks will tell you that the Persians came with millions of soliders, but that just wasn't even possible given the state of military logistics at the time.
So, look at the #4 general in the article, Khalid ibn al-Walid. As an example data point, the article on the Battle of Yamama (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Yamama) says he fought at nearly a 4:1 disadvantage, and as far as I can tell, the only source for these numbers is the Quran. Much like how the Greek sources love to tell you how big, bad and numerous the Persians that they defeated were, how great is God's glory if the army of God is steamrollering equal or smaller size armies?
I'm not sure how the author could account for this. IMO this underweights more recent and well-attributed generals such as Napoleon or Wellesley.
Re: Ranking Some Generals in the History of Warfare
#7There are several issues with this analysis. Perhaps a more modern example would serve to illustrate this. Gregg Popovich is probably one of the greatest NBA coaches ever. However, if you look at the talent on his team compared to his opponents, maybe his wins with that talent isn't so impressive. However, an NBA coach's responsibilities include acquiring and developing talent. So the fact that he had more talent than his opponent in a game is a plus not a minus.
A general is also responsible for the logistics of maintaining his army and also of choosing battles where they have the most advantage. Thus, if a general over the course of a campaign is always engaging in battles with enemies where he is at a terrain or numerical advantage, that is positive for the general, not a negative. If a general is constantly fighting at a disadvantage in numbers or terrain, than can be a sign of weakness, not of strength - especially if they lose.
Thus, wins above replacement isn't a very good measure of generalship.
In addition, the data is incomplete. Napoleon fought 43 battles losing five. His biggest disaster, the Russian invasion was also his longest distance campaign. In contrast, here is the map of Alexander's empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great#/media/Fil.... Believing that the 9 listed battles of Alexander represent every battle his army fought while conquering an area this vast is very naive. The truth is that over the 2000 years since Alexander, the accounts of battles got distilled and what we have is a greatest hits version of his battles. In contrast, Napoleon was in an era when it is more likely that we have a more complete list of his battles.
Finally, in comparing Napolean with some of the other generals, it is important to remember that ultimately Napoleon lost on the field of battle. When it really mattered, he failed. Alexander and Julius Caesar, Subatai, Genghis Khan, etc all won their battles - especially the ones that counted.
Napoleon may have been a great tactician on the field of battle, but being a great general is more than that.
Re: Ranking Some Generals in the History of Warfare
#8>No other general came close to Napoleon in total battles. While Napoleon commanded forces in 43 battles
Subutai had over 60 battles. He also conquered largest areas and coordinated simultaneous operations over massive distances.
Re: Ranking Some Generals in the History of Warfare
#9This is a solid idea, but his dataset is too messy and incomplete to draw conclusions with much certainty. He notes that it misses many ancient and especially Eastern generals just because they don't have Wikipedia entries, but even for the ones he does have the data isn't consistent enough to support his methodology IMHO. To do this right would be a lot more effort.
Re: Ranking Some Generals in the History of Warfare
#10"Ranking Almost Every General in the History of Warfare" Not even close to "almost every general". Even taking into consideration his own admission that he left out the Mongols, his analysis is obviously very, very Western centric. Somehow the omission of the most populous continent in the world and probably throughout history didn't dissuade the author from making such a bold claim. The most obvious omissions were t…
Garbage in, garbage out. If your data set comes from scraping wikipedia, you're going to have these kinds of flaws and omissions. What's the alternative though, other than to hire an army of grad students? If flawed, at least it's interesting. I wish the author had gone into more detail about counterintuitive results (like Rommel), but part of the point of an exercise like this is to find instances where the model disagrees with common wisdom. If you jump straight to rejecting the model without asking why, you don't learn anything.
Some other thoughts:
- Analysis is limited to results of individual battles. That's a very narrow slice of a general's actual job.
- He ties WAR to overall W/L, which isn't great but the data doesn't give you many options.
- The model rewards "underdog" wins. This sounds like a decent proxy for skill, but it seems like a big part of the job is avoiding being an underdog in the first place.
- Army size and casualty figures for anything pre-17th century (and that's generous) are extremely suspect.